Quantifying and predicting Canada's ocean carbon sink

海洋吸收了人类活动产生的约三分之一的二氧化碳， 大幅度降低大气中的二氧化碳含量，减缓气候变化的速度。然而，海洋的 碳吸收率易受气候变化的影响，未来可能会下降。尽管 重要性和脆弱性，海洋吸收碳的速度令人惊讶地知之甚少， 尤其是在较小的区域尺度上，它的变化有多大。加拿大一直在大力投资于新的 海洋观测技术和扩大的数值模拟资源。我们的海军陆战队 碳汇项目旨在通过开发技术来利用这些投资， 海洋碳的观测转化为海洋碳吸收率的可靠估计。这将涉及 对观测结果进行校准和质量控制，根据观测结果确定海气通量， 量化生物过程对碳的影响，并将不同的测量整合到一个单一的 区域平均值。我们的项目还试图改善数值计算机模型的预测。这将 包括确定不同模型的优缺点，量化 观测到的变化是由长期气候变化驱动的，而不是自然变率， 哪些海洋过程需要包括在模型中，以获得对未来海洋的最准确预测 碳吸收我们将通过形成学生和博士后网络来实现这些目标。 研究人员与加拿大各地的学术和政府科学家，以促进我们对碳的理解 加拿大三个海洋区域的海洋动力学，并开发综合观测/建模技术， 量化和预测海洋作为重要碳汇的自然作用。

The ocean absorbs about one third of the carbon dioxide produced by human activities, resulting in substantially lower atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and slower rates of climate change. However, the ocean's carbon absorption rate is vulnerable to climate change and is likely to decrease in the future. Despite its importance and vulnerability, the rate at which the ocean absorbs carbon is surprisingly poorly known, especially how variable it may be on smaller regional scales. Canada has been investing significantly in new technologies to observe the ocean and in expanded numerical modelling resources. Our proposed Marine Carbon Sink project seeks to capitalize on these investments by developing techniques to transform new observations of marine carbon into reliable estimates of the ocean's carbon absorption rate. This will involve calibrating and quality controlling the observations, determining air-sea fluxes from the observations, quantifying the impact of biological processes on carbon, and integrating different measurements into a single regional average. Our project also seeks to improve predictions from numerical computer models. This will involve determining the strengths and weaknesses of different models, quantifying the extent to which observed changes are driven by long-term climate change as opposed to natural variability, and establishing which marine processes need to be included in models to obtain the most accurate predictions of future ocean carbon absorption. We will accomplish these objectives by forming a network of students and a postdoctoral researcher with academic and government scientists across Canada to advance our understanding of carbon dynamics in Canada's three ocean regions and to develop integrated observational/modelling techniques to quantify and predict the ocean's natural role as an important carbon sink.